Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Mentlegen,
Sorry for the lack of updates, I am on a vacation to focus on my health. Turns out that having your monitor as the primary source of light and stacks of empty pizza boxes by the chair is not much good for the human body. Leaving mortal issues aside, here is the update to the skin pack. This contains skins for the engineer's buildables and a few fixes. Here is the download:TF2 Tron v0.3
I would like to thank MugenOverlord for helping me on this one. Now, about the future of this skin pack, there are a few points I would like to talk about. First: Visibility. TF2 has a distinct art style and the lighting model that it uses makes the characters stand out in every type of environment. The Tron skin pack changes a lot of the details over the characters, and I have personally felt that it sometimes makes the characters harder to spot in a few scenarios. If the environment too is skinned as as the characters (black and dark shades of black with contrasting bright colors), depth perception takes a hit. See the video in the previous blog post for reference. Sure it looks pretty, but you can't play with that setup for long; it affects gameplay. Now this point is open for feedback, I feel that a lighter environment shade (see the snow in koth_viaduct, cp_coldfront) is ideal for characters skinned like this. Not exactly snow white, but partially desaturated and toned brighter so that the contrast between the characters and the environment is maintained. We can absolutely have the Tron style particle effects. Here, these images show what I mean:

Against dark environment

Against brighter environment

These images don't have glow on Solly's lines, but you should get the idea.

Second point: The weapons and hats. Just looking at the sheer number of hats and weapons we have in the game right now (and more are getting added day by day), skinning all of them is going to be a huge task. This, therefore, is not a priority right now. I plan to finish the maps and the HUD first, and then the weapons and hats.

Third point: I need help with all this stuff. It's a lot of work, and I can't sneak out enough time out of my job and gaming sessions. I need people who can texture stuff and are familiar with the Source SDK. I am new to the source SDK myself, and have to figure out a lot of stuff myself. It also needs to be tested for gameplay. For people willing to help, please add me on Steam, and thank you a lot.Update: We have created a Google Group for collaborating. Turns out Steam chat isn't the most convenient way of discussing stuff. Please go to this page and request an invite : TF2 Tron Google Group

I really appreciate all the feedback received so far, and hope to get more. Stay tuned and keep pushing the carts.